The 100: 22 Times Clarke Griffin Gave Us All the Feelings

The 100 Season 6 is on the horizon and our favorite apocalyptic hero is front and center in the trailer for the coming episodes. Clarke has always been a compelling and dynamic anchor for The 100, and her passion and complexity as a leader, a friend, a daughter, a mother, a woman, and a hero drive fans to keep coming back for more. 

To prepare for Clarke’s adventures on the new world as she strives to “be the good guy,” we are taking a look back at some of her most emotional moments so far.

Here are 22 times Clarke Griffin gave us all the feelings:   

1. When she gave Lexa the Traveler’s Blessing

This is one of the most emotionally devastating scenes in the entirety of The 100. Clarke fights the idea that Lexa is dying right up until the final moments before she takes her last breath, while everyone around her seems resigned to the loss from the moment the bullet leaves Titus’ gun.  

Clarke: In peace may you leave the shore, in love may you find the next. Safe passage on your travels, until our final journey on the ground. May we meet again. 

Clarke is no stranger to loss, but this one hits her the hardest. She and Lexa understood each other in ways that no one else has understood either of them.

Watching Clarke realize that she cannot save Lexa is completely heartbreaking. Even if you’re the strongest person in the world you cannot watch her give her dying love the Traveler’s Blessing without at least tearing up. 

2. When her father died

As I said, Clarke has known loss, and the loss of her father played a big part in shaping who she would become as a leader and as a person especially during The 100 Season 1.

This flashback comes early in Clarke’s journey and shows that fighting for the people she loves has always been a part of who she is as she spends most of the episode up to this point trying to find a way to help her father or keep him from being arrested. 

Clarke is so young and still fairly innocent here, yet she still shoulders the blame for her father’s death at this moment, believing he was arrested because of her confession of his plans to Wells, the chancellor’s son. Ultimately, Jake’s own choices and the Ark’s flawed justice system are what got him killed, but watching Clarke witness her father’s execution still hurts. 

3. When she had a panic attack after killing Finn

Wow, Clarke really has lost a lot of people, huh? I promise this list isn’t just Clarke reacting to everyone she loves dying. The 100 Season 2 Episode 9, “Remember Me,” opens with Clarke staring at Finn’s blood all over her hands and then proceeding to have a complete panic attack featuring sobs, hyper-fixation, and hyperventilation. 

Clarke begins to spiral as she scrubs at the blood on her hands with a fervor to rival Lady Macbeth and rocks back and forth in Abby’s arms saying “I had to” over and over. She’s not allowed to dwell on these feelings for long as Lexa comes in moments later and Clarke must once again put on a brave face to negotiate for her people. 

4. When she spent three months alone in the wasteland

Okay, so maybe a considerable amount of this list is times that Clarke lost everyone she loves. Can you blame me? Eliza Taylor packs double the emotions into the moments where Clarke is facing immense tragedy.

The 100 Season 5 Episode 1, “Eden,” opens with Clarke spending over three months wandering the wasteland after Praimfaya has destroyed the Earth and left her separated from everyone she’s ever known. 

Clarke: I’ve been by myself now for two months, but this is the first time I feel alone. It’s like we were never here, maybe we never should’ve been…I came to Arkadia looking for food or water, but all I found were ghosts.  

We spend a solid twenty minutes of this episode alone with Clarke in the desert as she goes through all her options for survival and slowly begins to lose hope that she’ll ever see her friends or her family again. Taylor is devastating as Clarke beats against the ruins of Polis trying to reach her mother and heartbreaking as she breaks down over Jasper’s things.

She reaches her lowest point just before she finds sanctuary, nearly taking her own life. These moments with Clarke are absolutely riveting and they make the happiness she does find once she reaches the valley that much sweeter. 

5. When she was reunited with everyone she thought was dead on The 100 Season 2

See, I told you this list wasn’t just sad moments where Clarke lost loved ones, some are moments where she got loved ones back! At the end of Season 1, Clarke closes the dropship door with many of her friends on the other side of it, after thinking that her mother, and pretty much anyone else still on the Ark had died. When she wakes up in Mount Weather, she’s made to believe that any of her friends that weren’t captured are dead. 

When she arrives back at Arkadia, she’s nearly mistaken for a grounder and imprisoned, but Abby immediately recognizes her daughter and they share a tender reunion. Abby has been doing everything she can to get back to Clarke since the day they sent the hundred to the ground, and Clarke now knows her mother and at least six more of her friends are alive. 

The next morning we get to see an elated if exhausted Clarke as she reunites with Raven, Octavia, and Bellamy, rushing to hug the friends she thought she’d lost. We feel the same overwhelming emotions as Clarke does through all of these scenes, the absolute joy she has at realizing she hasn’t lost everyone and she doesn’t have to do this alone. 

6. When she walked away on The 100 Season 2

Play RAIGN’s cover of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” and every The 100 fan within shouting distance is going to have an emotional reaction. Broken by the choices she had to make to save her friends from Mount Weather, after bringing her people home safely, Clarke decides that she cannot go inside with them.  

Clarke: Seeing their faces every day is just going to remind me of what I did to get them here. 

Bellamy urges Clarke to stay but ultimately understands why she can’t; after all, he carries the same burden.

It hurts to see her walk away from everyone she loves and put herself in exile to try to wash the blood off of her hands. Clarke spends the next three months on a walkabout trying to hide from the person that the ground has turned her into and the rest of Skaikru, particularly Bellamy and Abby, feel her absence the entire time she’s away. 

7. When she woke Abby up from the City of Light

Heading into the final episode of The 100 Season 3, Clarke has practically run out of options when it comes to saving the human race from an evil AI; she needs her mom. The emotions of this scene are delicate and raw and beautifully tragic as Clarke brings Abby back from being controlled and forced to do horrible things. 

Clarke: I know you’re in there. Come back to me, I need you. 

Clarke balances the need to be comforted and the need to comfort perfectly in this scene. The pure relief she feels as Abby wakes up is so clear on her face and the sorrow she feels as she watches her mother realize what happened makes your heart ache for her. 

8. When she sacrificed herself for her friends

From day one Clarke has been willing to lay down her life for her friends, and here she actually does. The 100 Season 4 Episode 13, “Praimfaya,” is one of the show’s best episodes and one of the most emotional for Clarke Griffin. 

Clarke: Raven, Bellamy, if you can hear me don’t wait. 

Season 4 was difficult for Clarke as she struggled to find solutions to save what was left of humanity from an unstoppable apocalyptic force. She made a few impossible choices, some of which she lived to regret, and she nearly crumbled under the responsibility of saving the world. 

At this moment, Clarke earned her ultimate redemption; with Praimfaya on the way, no way to get to the rocket in time or back to the safety of the bunker, and no guarantee that the nightblood transfusion will keep her safe, Clarke makes the decision to die as long as it will save her friends.

She stays and works on getting the power on at the ring even as she sees the rocket leave with the death wave rolling ever closer. Thankfully, she lives to tell the tale, but seeing her make this sacrifice still brings tears to my eyes every time. 

9. When she was reunited with Bellamy on Season 5

Clarke and Bellamy’s Season 5 reunion was the most-anticipated reunion after Clarke was separated from everyone at the end of Season 4, and it was completely worth the wait.

I still get chills that last from the moment that Madi first recognizes Bellamy in the woods, to him walking out of the headlights like a space knight in shining armor, to their tearful conversation on the ship as they fly toward the last undiscovered post-Praimfaya territory to rescue their loved ones.   

Bellamy: You saved us all.

Clarke: And now you’re home.

Clarke’s breathless “you’re really here” when Bellamy first pulls her into his arms indicates that until that moment she didn’t quite believe it. But he’s really there and he tells her that everyone that went to space is still alive, because of her.

Clarke sacrificed herself for her friends with no guarantee that it would work or if she would ever see any of them again, but at this moment she knows every minute of the last six years was worth it because her friends are all still alive. And now they’re home. 

10. When she and Lexa decided to live in the moment

Clarke and Lexa had one of the most epic romances on television. Both leaders of their people, they continually put their obligations to the communities they served above their own desires. Most of the time, Clarke is making selfless decisions to do whatever it takes to keep her people safe. 

Even here she comes to Lexa with the intention of leaving to protect her people, even though she really wants to stay with Lexa. And Lexa completely understands; Clarke’s choices to put the needs of her people first is one of the things that made Lexa fall in love with her in the first place. 

Clarke: Maybe someday you and I will owe nothing more to our people. 

For all she tries, Clarke can’t leave Lexa without showing her how she really feels about her. She takes this moment to show Lexa, and herself, that life really is about more than just surviving. It’s okay to love. It’s okay to be happy. Sometimes following your heart is more important than fulfilling your duty. 

11. When she tried to be the good guy

On The 100 Season 2 Finale, Clarke virtually has the weight of the world on her shoulders after her plan to save everyone fell apart when Lexa made a deal to save the grounders, leaving Skaikru at the mercy of the Mountain Men with no one but Clarke and a handful of her friends to save them. 

The stakes are already high as the Mountain Men have already started draining the delinquents of their blood and bone marrow in order to make themselves radiation-resistant, but when they capture more of her friends and family, including Raven and Abby, Clarke is forced to make impossible decisions at the last-minute to save the lives of the people she loves.  

Clarke: I tried. I tried to be the good guy. 

Abby: Maybe there are no good guys.

Because her enemy refuses to see reason, Clarke has to be just as ruthless in return to win the fight for survival. Making the choice to kill all of the people from Mount Weather, including the innocent, is something that nearly breaks Clarke. She tries to be the good guy, and to her people she is, but she knows that wiping out an entire society to save her own does not make her a hero.   

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